Poynt review

Summary

Our Score

9/10

Review Price free/subscription

Poynt is a location-aware app that lets you quickly find services in your area. With the tap of an icon you can look up local cinemas, restaurants, 'events', other businesses and - more recently - petrol price lookup has been added.

Possibly the worst aspect of this app is the very first screen you see. Rather than a simple grid of icons there's a 3D carousel of links to the different services. Thankfully, once you've initially chosen one service, you can easily access the other services using the tabbed links that run along the bottom of the page. When you reopen the app you should go straight to this view too.

Once passed this opening hurdle, the interface is simplicity itself. Tap a tab to get to the type of service you require, select a category and away you go. For movie, restaurant and petrol station lookup, you can generally get to a list of your nearest options within just two taps. It takes a moment to perform the search and find out where you are but it's still quick and easy.

Film lookup provides options for searching by nearest cinema or by movie, with a top 10 of recent films also available. If none of these find you what you're looking for, you can search by genre or type in a manual search.

Meanwhile restaurants can be searched by simply their proximity or be type of cuisine, with an optino for a manual search again available. As for Petrol stations, it's nearest of cheapest - there's no option for a manual lookup.

Events is an intriguing one. It provides lists of gigs, trade shows, museum events, kids events, nightlife hotspots and much more. It's quite a useful tool, though data sources clearly don't go all that local with most of the events being big blockbuster gigs and shows.

Once you've find the service you're interested in, the app provides quick links to the spot on the map, directions, add it to your calendar, and in the case of the restaurants you even get information such as the average main course price.

VerdictIt may not offer the most granular detail about your location but Poynt offers a quick and easy way to find key services when you're out and about. The interface is clean and simple, and as a freebie it surely has to be an essential app addition.